


The Promise of Forever (By the Light of Candelabra)

by A_J_Crowley



Series: The Good Book Of Omens [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ballroom Dancing, Comfort, Crowley Sings (Good Omens), Dancing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Female Crowley (Good Omens), Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gardener Aziraphale (Good Omens), Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Mutual Pining, Nanny Crowley (Good Omens), Poetry, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Slow Burn, Slow Dancing, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Tooth-Rotting Fluff, crowley's voice is angelic, memories of eden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:00:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21527128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_J_Crowley/pseuds/A_J_Crowley
Summary: Once every year, a glorious evening befalls the Dowling's family residence - a ballroom escapade brought to life in the warm glow of candelabra and the elegant affairs of its guests; a time for fine wine in the company of strangers. But when Aziraphale is forced to confront his mounting fears for the silent love he has harboured over Crowley for centuries, the angel is faced with the toughest decision of all.Will he allow himself to confess his heart's desire, enshrouded in the suffocating smother of Heaven's wings, or will a demon's song hold the key to his absolution?(Or: Crowley's romantic efforts backfire. Slow dances, a tender moment of song, and the tooth-rotting glory of comfort and fluff ensue)!
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: The Good Book Of Omens [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1487606
Comments: 8
Kudos: 85
Collections: Crowley x Aziraphale, The Good Omens Library





	The Promise of Forever (By the Light of Candelabra)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic originally had some teething issues with it not appearing on my dash, hence, it had to be reuploaded twice. I apologise for any confusion this may have caused for readers trying to access it!

_“He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine.”_

  * _Wuthering Heights_



The Dowling’s family residence was alive. A glittering fortress of flickering lanterns caught in the cool, November dusk. Frosted windows glowed rosy with the warmth of fiery heaths, enticing and strangely intimate – promises of seemingly endless nights spent comforted in the arms of familiar embrace.

Rich fabrics adorned the walls in draping billows – lacy and elegant – cobbled pathways paved in flower petals leading to the exquisite heart of the household; an expansive ballroom clad in centuries-old woodwork and marble flooring.

To those unaccustomed to the intricacies of the manor, its grandeur might have been described as breath-taking; and to the few, fortunate souls that took up residence there, its transformation was only marginally less so.

Aziraphale stood alone in his frumpy disguise as the kind-hearted gardener; taking in the expansively lavished room. He had made some effort to dress for the occasion, his stained, eggshell-blue overalls exchanged for a crow-black suit and collar; his tangled shroud of wiry hair brushed back and softened the slightest touch. He had done nothing more, however, to rebuke his appearance. His pale nose and forehead remained blotchy with sunburn; white eyebrows still viciously untamed. The angel did not see fit purpose to alter them – they were a part of Brother Francis – a man who was meant to demonstrate the reverence of inner beauty to young Warlock than the temporary flash of its youth-kissed portrayal.

Still, it made Aziraphale feel somewhat abash in the gorgeously decorated ballroom; its rows of guests that mingled about him not sparing so much as a sideways glance. Not a smile, nor a tip of a hat. Just blank, unyielding stares from eyes that seemed to pass directly through him to meet with some other pretty face.

He was not accustomed to this way of thinking. Not used to the idle formalities of chit-chat with strangers, at least, not with _these_ strangers, who seemed too caught up in the physical than to find interest in what lay beneath.

And that… was a little _frightening._

With a steadying gulp, Aziraphale shrunk backwards, melding with a quiet corner secluded from the rush. Here, he could think and merely observe. No obligations or duties. Just the art of being invisible as the world flowed and stumbled and tripped over itself around him.

He could watch them here. He could wait. Wait for the familiar clipping of heels to rescue him from the ghosts of his uncertainties.

_Where was he?_

_Where was Crowley?_

Aziraphale cast out his senses, letting his blue eyes sweep across the golden expanse. The demon was nowhere to be seen – which was odd, given his profanity for attention. He’d always enjoyed parties such as these; the chance to effortlessly perform a few quick temptations whilst turning a fair number of heads in the process. But as much as the angel probed in every corner, in every free space or huddle that the demon would usually occupy, he came up with nothing.

_Crowley wasn’t here._

A pebble of concern dropped in Aziraphale’s stomach. _Maybe he was running a tad late?_ Anthony had always been a stickler when it came to appearances. Or maybe he had simply decided not to be seen; like Aziraphale? To watch and take note, awaiting the ideal moment to make his grand entrance?

With a nervous flutter of dew-misted lashes, the angel let his eyes fall shut. In the confides of his mind, he could see everything with so much clarity. Could sense the parading strobe of feet on the dance floor; the elevating pulse of every unfamiliar heartbeat – like the delicate flapping of a butterfly’s wings.

He concentrated, projecting tendrils of his ethereal essence into the fusillade; _searching; feeling for a presence he knew better than the rumpled curves of his own, corporeal being._

“Looking for someone in particular?”

The warm wisp of a honey-coated tongue echoed in his ear. Aziraphale stumbled in shock; blue eyes cracking open with the inner _boom_ of roiling thunder. A lithe shape slunk through the curtains to his right – long and inhuman; limbless in its otherworldly grandeur.

The angel felt the ghost of a smile toy at his lips. The snake poked out its head to look at him; golden eyes alit with primal fire as midnight scales glimmered in the flickering light of nearby candelabra.

“What are you doing like _that?”_ hissed Aziraphale with a frustrated puff of breath. “The humans won’t take too kindly if they spot you skulking about in the shadows. They’ll call animal welfare for a start! It’d be such a terrible fuss…”

“Oh, calm down, angel.” rasped Crowley, forked tongue flicking idly as he projected his words directly into Aziraphale’s mind. “They’re far too taken by their own affairs to see much further. I could slither right up to one and coil around their leg, and I bet they still wouldn’t notice.”

“Let’s not test that theory, shall we?” shook the angel dryly, eliciting a serpentine laugh from Crowley. It was an odd, crackling sound. The hiss of an open flame coupled with the hiccupping croak of a sailor caught red-handed in the rum cellar.

Aziraphale couldn’t help but grin.

“How dull do you take me for?” gasped the demon, feigning hurt. “Besidesssss, it’d ruin my entrance!”

The snake suddenly reared up, coils unravelling like an ocean wave barrelling toward the shore. The curtain shifted, engulfing Crowley in a haze of scarlet silk – and when he reappeared, Aziraphale could barely contain his slacked-jawed shock.

The serpent was gone. In its place stood the figure of a lithe woman; nanny Ashtoreth – Crowley’s weekday alias for the last six years. Except this time, she looked even more stunning than Aziraphale could have thought physically possible. Gone was the charming black dress; the short, curled locks, the quaint pair of shades to cover the unearthly hue of golden irises. Instead, a gorgeous, midnight blue gown draped about her in swathes of finest velvet, sprinkled with tiny gems meticulously put together in the arrangements of the stars. Long, unkempt hair burned like fire in a perfect tangle along her spine, melding into the cosmos of her shape, haloing the masquerade ball mask that shielded her eyes just enough to be both attention-demanding and inconspicuous, all at once.

 _By the hands of angels, nothing could ever have been crafted so beautiful as this._ Thought Aziraphale dizzily, kneading the tremor from his hands. _This form hath be borne from the miracle of demons; tempered in the scorch of fire and pulled from the darkness of ethereal night._

With a playful wink, Crowley hooked her arm in the crook of the angel’s elbow and lead them out onto the ballroom floor. Aziraphale, still staggered by the effects of the demon’s transformation, barely registered his halting steps until the pair were deep within the throws of humanity; all bowing like willow branches in the wake of Hell’s most dazzling spectacle, and the small, insignificant gardener that clung to her like a lifeboat at sea.

Aziraphale did not want such attention. He wanted to disappear between the cracks; to shelter in the shadow of Crowley’s presence, if only for a night. A few chinwags and gentle chatter among the sprawl; _not_ to have everyone’s eyes suddenly trained on him; a parasite fastened to her hip.

“Crowley, what are you doin--?”

“Care for a dance, angel?” the demon stopped, voice like a perfumed rose; delicate and unnaturally enticing. Aziraphale almost choked on it.

With a swivel of his head, the angel cast about, taking note of the sea of disbelieving faces. He could picture them now – Heaven’s gaze trained on him in shades of angry violent; golden, freckled cheeks pinched in the sourness of a frown. _Watching. Judging. Plotting..._

 _One wrong move, Aziraphale, and it’s over. It’ll_ all _be over._

“N-No…!” he spluttered out, taking a forceful step back and tearing from Crowley’s grasp, rather unkindly, in a desperate bid to get away. “No thank you, my dear. I think it best if I don’t…!”

“But angel…” Crowley reached for him; long, elegant hands trailing to sweep him back into the sanctuary of her arms; but seemed to think better of it as Aziraphale cowered backwards, nearly wiping out an elderly gentleman who voiced his displeasure with an indignant huff.

“I’m sorry!” the angel almost yelled, striding into the crowd. They parted like the Red Sea, and in a flash, the angel was gone; a chameleon well-adept in an instinctual game of not wanting to be seen.

All Crowley could do was watch, ensnared in a biting smog of confusion, heart fractured and bleeding. Not because of a silly, lost dance. Not because of the angel’s rejection.

It was the hurt she’d seen in Aziraphale’s eyes. The violent longing barbed by a sorrow so great, he’d unwittingly radiated it onto her without even the knowledge of doing so.

And now… Crowley was drowning in it.

***

Aziraphale leant against the balcony; a hollow ridge of steel and concrete propped against the torrents of the wind. Silk curtains waltzed at his back, pale and ghostly in the darkening night; fluttering in movements oddly spurred by the distant throb of classical music. The scratch of a violin. The heavy _clunk_ of piano keys marring with the tips of callused hands.

He could not hear the beauty in their notes. The melody meant to tug at his heartstrings. All that came through was the chaos of creation to be found _between_ the beats – the hammering of fingers. The jarring screech of a bow dragged across too-taught strings, braced on the verge of snapping.

 _How could I have run out like that?_ Aziraphale chided himself, curling against the heat building in his reddening cheeks. _How could I have embarrassed Crowley in such a way, when all she was trying to do was offer up a single scrap of kindness? More than a demon should ever have, in fact?_

He pictured her now, midnight dress flowing as the storm inside the angel had turned biblical, striking her with a tongue born of thunder and kissed with lightning. He had walked away as her body crumpled – eyes so very pained at his blatant stupidity! _Oh, how could he had been so foolish!_

Aziraphale shivered as he felt the icy tendril of a tear skim his wobbling chin. A cold caress to sap away his breath and leave him empty; a sob hitching in his throat. Somewhere in the darkness, the warbling of a marshland crane rattled in the frigid night air, followed by an explosion of thrumming wings.

The angel winced. _How his heart longed to fly off with them! To leave everything behind! To live, for but a moment, detached from the obsessive looming of Heaven’s folly. His existence was a gilded cage; his wings clipped – enough to glide from bar to bar, but never further. An illusion of deliverance._

_All he wanted was to be free! Free of judgement. Free to exist. Free to love…!_

Aziraphale curled in on himself as he cracked – uttering a throbbing, trembling cacophony of sobs. He was fractured and broken – rosy cheeks flushing in shades of scarlet as he wept. _Free… I just want to be free!_

_“Angel…?”_

A tentative voice startled him – and Aziraphale stood up straighter, jutting his face out into the shadows beyond the balcony.

Crowley approached with a cautious pace – steps measured and deliberate, as though attempting to draw in close to a frightened animal. Aziraphale noticed, and hastily scrubbed the moisture from his eyes with a deft wave of his sleeve. _He didn’t want the demon to see he’d been crying, though a small, insufferable part of him understood that Crowley probably already knew._

“What are you doing out here in the cold?” the demon’s voice was unbearably soft as she stooped down beside him, eyes trained at the expansive gardens shrouded in the gloom. She was clearly feigning ignorance for Aziraphale’s sake, skimming around the mundane fussing that would fray the angel’s already-tattered dignity. “The party’s _inside,_ if you haven’t noticed.”

“I’m not going back there.” Aziraphale answered miserably, sounding rather deflated, the expression at odds with his usually chipper tone.

Crowley almost flinched. She didn’t like hearing the righteous warrior of Eden sounding so defeated. With a steadying gulp, she forced an upbeat smile.

“Y’know, I think we made quite the impression back there. The gardener and the nanny; how scandalous! They’re probably stringing rumours about us right now!”

Aziraphale went rigid; felt the prickle of hairs rise along his spine.

“Oh… Oh dear…” he muttered, rather panicked. He cupped his head in his hands, shielding his face from view, and trembled as a gust of wind buffeted his wayward locks. “I’m so sorry, Crowley! I hope they don’t say anything too embarrassing! I… I never intended to mess things up for you!”

The demon faltered, her smile vanishing. This was not the sort of reaction she’d intended to pry from the angel. She’d said it for a laugh; not to make Aziraphale feel even worse than he already did.

“Hey, now…” soothed Crowley reverently, reaching out a halting arm to rub Aziraphale’s back. This time, she felt the angel lean into the touch, and her heart fluttered with the tiniest semblance of hope. “You have nothing to apologise for! I was the one being foolish, dragging you up there like that.”

Crowley paused, licking the scarlet paint from her lips. “Who would wanna dance in that snooty ballroom anyway? All those prissy, no-good snobs! Too stuck up their own butts to… to give a damn about anything other than themselves!”

“Crowley, dear…” Aziraphale abolished, shaking his head. His eyes were trained on the demon now; wet and glistening in the frail moonlight. Anthony folded her arms across her chest with a terrible pout rather unbefitting the face of someone, who, at this very moment, appeared so breath-takingly elegant.

“All I’m saying, is that you shouldn’t be sorry. Not in the slightest.”

Aziraphale felt his muscles slacken; the armour he’d built up fracture and crack. An errant tear escaped in the exodus of his shield, sliding down his cheek in a silver rivulet that mirrored the glittering sheen of liquid stardust.

With a little gasp, Crowley reached to wipe it away, thumb tracing the angel’s skin. He felt warm beneath her fingers, stubbled jaw scratchy against the delicate touch of her palm. A blush flowed between them; a familiar heat at odds with the bitter cold of Autumn’s dying breath. It climbed up Crowley’s face like an overflowing basin; where it extended outward, catching at Aziraphale’s neck and splotching the skin there in hues of rose-petal pink.

They looked at each other in wordless abandon; Aziraphale’s hand gently working to pry the mask from the demon’s face. An unbearably soft tug; the sliding of lace ribbons as the knot fastening it in place loosened and fell away, like two golden serpents tamed by the touch of a snake-charmer.

A little shudder passed through her as the masquerade piece was flung aside. It clattered at Crowley’s feet with a hollow rattle. There was no hiding now. Just brilliant stares of blue and amber; locked onto one another with a sense of intimacy usually reserved for lovers. The distance between them was gaping; a wide, yowling pit – hungry and desperate.

They drew in closer, inch by inch, bridging the divide; a dance of their own making. Filled with unspoken things; of millennia of silent courtship; of shackles being twisted and yanked apart. The whistling of plummeting bombs. Of miracles inside the ruins of hallowed ground. Of secretive meetings beside a duckpond; and anger and stolen glances when the entire world stopped looking. Of acceptance. Of friendship. Of… _love._

And then, just like that… it was over.

Crowley broke touch first, lowering her arms with a clear sigh of resignation. Aziraphale watched her gently; disappointment clouding the starlight twinkle in his ocean blue eyes.

They were well-accustomed to the cost. To waltz in an eternal dance in which they could never truly touch; made up of flittering contact and skimming gazes; two stars destined to orbit one another until the end of time.

A far way off, a clash of thunder roared across the wind, carrying with it the scent of rainfall. Aziraphale shivered, instinctively tugging up the collar of his suit as he gave the bright, ignorant moon a pitiful glare. A storm was brewing. It would be here before the dawn’s light.

“Remember the day we first met?” whispered Crowley, daring to taint the sullen hush. She grinned fondly, a smattering of scales rippling up her neck, roused by the memories of Eden. “We were both so young back then. Gawking at everything She’d created. We’d barely figured out how to walk in our corporations!”

“You found it easier to slither around in that serpentine form than you ever did on two legs!” chuckled Aziraphale with a wink. “Part of me thinks you still haven’t gotten used to it; the way you strut about!”

Crowley scoffed; brows arched in mock indignation. “I don’t _strut,_ angel! I pivot… _saunter_ , perhaps.”

The demon let out a shaky breath, rouge lips taut in recollection. _A memory of falling._ “In Eden, I was… different. I was cold, _hurt._ J-just so… _angry…”_

Crowley trailed off, a haunted look contracting her meagre pupils into vertical slivers shrouded in gold.

Aziraphale frowned; a deeply worried look that knitted the hairs of his wiry eyebrows. He touched the demon’s shoulder, and with a startled little fluster, Crowley leaned into it.

“You had every right to be, my dear.” spoke the angel, very gently, wincing as a flash of lightning webbed across the horizon.

Crowley offered a weak laugh, noticing the reaction. She put on her best theatrical voice; tone warbling like a refined, elderly woman in pearls. “That’s blasphemous, Aziraphale! Imagine if She _heard_ you, all the way down here! I bet they’re tallying up yours sins right now; see if you qualify as demon material! It will be scandalous! A true travesty of the highest degree!”

The angel tried to look mortified but could not hold his façade. He cracked as laughter poured out of him, sweet and chimed, like the jingling of bells. It made Crowley’s heart ache; ache with a pleasure so humbling, she would give a part of her immoral soul just to hear that sound grace the end of her days.

After a good few minutes of giggling that swiftly turned into humour-induced hiccups; of tears slipping between eyelids screwed shut with warmth and the happiness found in the slight reprieve; the two deities fell into a familiar, yet comfortable silence.

The storm had found its way closer now, a faint boundary of cloud skirting the edge of the waning moon. Crowley sighed, and pulled herself upright in a long, cat-like stretch; russet hair tussling in the breeze.

Before she even registered _what_ she was about to do, a low melody of words left her parted lips, curling with the milky vapour of her breath. An Enochian chorus made gravelly by demonic lisp – but soft and _beautiful,_ none the less.

Aziraphale stilled at her side. He had never heard Crowley sing. Not like _this._ Not since the Flood, when she’d wept for the sleeping children she had managed to save, and the ones she hadn’t. Not since Golgotha, when the body of a tortured holy man lay strung on a cross in the simmering wrath of red sunlight, as vivid as the blood tainting his skin. Not since the crumbling ruins of the blitz, when she’d clutched at the hand of a frail, old woman, trapped and dying beneath the wreckage of her devastated home, praying for her to depart with the knowledge of company. That she wasn’t truly _alone._

 _An angel’s song is a powerful tool._ Gabriel’s words echoed in his head, from a time long passed. A time Before. _It is sacred. It holds the memories of its keeper. To use it, is to bear one’s soul. To hear it, is to know Her._

Aziraphale could sense it now. Knew those words to be true.

Crowley’s ethereal spirit radiated within her song; an enchanting, hallowed cord of pain and desire. Of withered faith burning still, refusing to be snubbed out. Six thousand years of friendship and utter adoration for the angel swelling to construct the very fibres of her soul.

She filled the air around him, and Aziraphale breathed her in. Let his ears listen, with the knowledge that he would never hear something so beautiful again, lest it be her.

When she was finally finished, and the last crescendo died with a requiem in her throat, tears were glittering on both their faces. Crowley sniffed, raising a trembling hand to dab them away.

“I… I wanted to show you…” she murmured, supressing a sob of emotion and trapping it at the back of her throat. “This is me _now,_ angel. I… I’m not that angry, wrenched creature anymore, back in the Garden, or even in Heaven. Every day of this everlasting life, I become a little more of _me._ Because… because I know _you.”_

She felt the words hitch with an unflattering garble. It was all Aziraphale could do to not crumple in her arms. To hold her, and never let go.

And in some way… _he didn’t._ He held out his hand for Crowley to take. He guided her, without words, back into the glitterball clamour of the ballroom. Through the wading crowds of wide-eyed patrons. Through the golden light that suddenly seemed to dim, as if by miracle, in the wake of their approach, until they were in the centre of it all, two stars orbiting so close, as to appear as one.

“May I have this dance, my dear?” Aziraphale rasped, almost shyly, into the demon’s ear.

She answered with a deft swirl of midnight lace; a living embodiment of the constellations she’d created when time held no meaning. When her wings were pure white, and her body constructed of stardust.

She was that again. _Now._ In the twinkling radiance of the candelabras.

She would always be so, to Aziraphale.

And, a few years later; in the sunshine days that followed the end of all things; when the guests of that evening would fondly recall the dance that they mysteriously could never seem to forget, they pictured a nanny and a kind-hearted gardener, enraptured by the promise of their forever.

***


End file.
